1914; and a century begins...

It is Boxing Day, 2013. The next holiday in the chute is New Years of course, and with it we may end the world's worst century. If we are luckier than wise.

100 years ago the world seemed secure and peaceful. Some statesmen knew it was a fragile peace, but few had any idea what the costs of shredding the peace would be.

In 1878, Otto von Bismark is reputed to have said "Europe today is a powder keg and the leaders are like men smoking in an arsenal ... A single spark will set off an explosion that will consume us all ... I cannot tell you when that explosion will occur, but I can tell you where ... Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans will set it off."

But 35 years later, in 1913, the statesmen, in their wisdom (or hubris?) were sure they had figured it out, that they could "manage" war should it come. 

At the end of 1913,  Great Britain worried far more about trouble in Ireland than anywhere in the Balkans. There was also uncertainty in Europe's capitols, as well as in Washington DC, as to the fate of investments in China as Sun Yat Sen's revolution swept away the Manchu Dynasty. Washington was mostly worried about Mexico and its troubles.

Great power politics in Europe resembled a family reunion or squabble; the Hohenzollerns in Berlin, the Romanovs in Moscow, and the Hanovers in London were linked through marriage and blood. George V of England was easily mistaken for his Cousin Nicholas II of Russia and both bore a family resemblance to their cousin Willy--Wilhelm II--of Germany. And they were united (well, related) as well to the Hapsburgs who ruled over the decrepit Austro-Hungarian Empire. 

On Europe's southeast flank, the relatively new Serbian kingdom sought to reclaim an imagined glory by uniting the Slavic peoples and carving off a corner of Austria's domains. Serb leaders appealed to a pan-Slavic identity and, bolstered by Russia--who had their own issues with Vienna and the Hapsburgs--stirred trouble in the province of Bosnia-Herzegovina through ultra-nationalist terrorist gangs such as The Black Hand. 

Six months into the new year, on 28 June 1914, a damned foolish thing happened in the Balkans. 

Gavrilo Princip, a Black Hand terrorist in his 20s shot and killed the Hapsburg heir, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, in Sarajevo. Vienna demanded harsh reparations from the Serb government in Belgrade and appealed to their partner in the Triple Alliance, Germany, for help. Belgrade in turn, turned to Moscow for help and attempted to negotiate less onerous reparations from Vienna. Although Europe was a web of treaties and alliances; some secret, some open, no one thought that the "thing" in Sarajevo would lead to general war. Cooler heads would prevail.

Professor Michael Neiberg examines the first weeks of July 1914 in his new book, The Dance of the Furies. He looks at the correspondence of  "ordinary" Europeans as well as press reporting in those fateful weeks of July and reveals that no one thought much about the event beyond noting it as a tragedy. Certainly there was no sense of far greater tragedies dead ahead. Dr Neiberg discusses his conclusions in a lecture at the National WWI Memorial Museum in March of this year.

What is most striking about the beginnings of the war is that the leaders thought they had it under control. They thought that, at worst, it would be a manageable minor conflict on Europe's periphery. They weren't fools; in his lecture Dr Neiberg talks about his desire to rescue the the people of July 1914 from "the stupid box," to show that they were on ground they thought they understood and were buffeted by forces wholly beyond their ken. Neither fools or knaves, they were the best their nations could offer as leaders and public servants, and yet...

The Great War they unleashed destroyed their world. At its end, the family businesses of the Hohenzollerns, Romanovs, and Hapsburgs (aka the German, Russian and Austrian empires) were gone. Britain's empire was mortally wounded. Ideologies that were gasping for oxygen--or didn't even exist--before the war became conflagrations of thought and emotion. And the embers were laid for a greater war to come. 

A poem from that second war captures some of the statesmans' folly in their surety. 

Son, written by a Russian Jewish poet, Pavel Antokolsky, in 1943 is a dialog between a father and his son who was killed in action the previous year. In the poem the son tells his father: 

"We’re on a route uncharted, fire and blood erase our tracks.
On we fly, on wings of thunder, never more to sheath our swords. "

War is indeed a route uncharted; it is easy to get into and damnably difficult to navigate and get out of again. War releases forces beyond our imagination and beyond our ability to recapture.

It was not entirely cowardice that led many in England and France to dread the thought of another war in the 1930s. It was also a healthy regard for what the last one had unleashed. The Second World War was made necessary by the First, which had released unimaginable evil. In its resolution however, the second war perpetuated the problems of the first, along with new ones and required accommodating one evil to defeat a worse evil.

Today there are statesmen and leaders who would take us into war for the best of reasons; to protect the helpless, to combat terrorism, control weapons of mass destruction. No one goes to war for ignoble reasons, in public. No one ever imagines how much worse it can be.

Perhaps we will learn or perhaps we will get lucky and not repeat the mistakes of the past 100 years. Perhaps we will pay attention to the past and its lessons and expect no less of our leaders.

Answering his son in the poem, Pavel Antokolsky writes: 

"Farewell…

"I will dream of you still as a baby,
Treading the earth with little strong toes,
The earth where already so many lie buried.
This song to my son, is come to its close"

The other Churchill; and a World of Hope and Glory

At the cusp of the 19th and 20th centuries one of the most popular writers in the English speaking world was an American from St Louis named Winston Churchill. He was so popular that an up and coming English politician with the same name felt it necessary to use his middle initial, S, to distinguish himself.

In 1918 Churchill wrote a book called A Traveller in Wartime (it can be downloaded free in Google Books). The book contains an appendix called "The American Contribution," which is a very interesting examination of American and European -- particularly British -- politics and developments as WWI crawled to its close. Churchill offers a stirring defense of the emerging liberal order of its day. It is fascinating to read, to see the imaginings that would become the New Deal, and realize that we are having the many of the same discussions today, 100 years later.

Old Jules Country

Call it moonscape if you want,
Or UFO country.
To me, it is the turn toward home,
That half-left at mile marker 103,
Down into the dusk of Old Jules Country.
The road speeds past silhouettes
Of bare trees and hills, joined by
Windmills and billboards, silos,
And pumping rigs that pierce the earth
Drinking blood of dinosaurs and mastodons;
Silhouettes of irrigation rigs snake
Across plow-dappled fields where buffalo fed
And fell to Cheyenne arrows.
This was the home of the great southern herd,
A bison sea moving in waves across the prairie,
Where Herefords now dot the hills
And mope in feedlots.
Closer in, past Sterling, 
The houses and truckstops
Sneak the land away from old Jules
And the ghosts; the bison and Cheyenne.
The ghosts, the bones remain with the hills and trees.
The tracks endure beneath the concrete road
As it speeds toward the orange and dusky sky.

Delusion and Deadbeats

For Ted Cruz and Company:

Read This !!! and This!!!  and then this!!!

Would breaching the debt ceiling be catastrophic? Survey says yes!

However, if you think that the Yuan or Euro would be a better reserve currency than the Dollar, or think that Europe's interwar economies  are a good model, then this depression will be for you (and thanks to you). 

But, DON'T / DON'T call yourself a patriot ever again.

Debt, Deficit, and Deadbeats

The shutdown is chugging along and the debt limit throw-down is just around the corner. Soon, all the horror stories about our debt will roll off the tongue of every right wing shouter and every journalist desperate to not be seen as biased. 

Is the nation in debt? Absolutely and too much. Several things get the blame, some unfairly. Social Security gets a good piece of the blame, although even its harshest critics (for the most part) admit that it isn't an immediate problem. Social Security -- as it now exists -- has quite a few good years left. If the Congress had kept to the "grand bargain" worked out by President Reagan, Tip O'Neill and Robert Dole in the 80s, and allowed the amount of income subject to Social Security tax to rise along with average income, Social Security would be solvent well beyond anyone's ability to predict. 

Medicare is a different problem. Health care costs have been increasing well above the rate of inflation for years and the situation is now becoming untenable, although the rate of increase is slowing now. Still predictions that our government is on its way to becoming a health care agency with a military is a worrisome prospect.

Speaking of our military, it is too big and too expensive. The individual services have always had insatiable appetites and far too little effort is put into restraining them. The services often appear incapable of thinking of a common good, beyond their own needs and desires. It isn't as overtly as bad as during the "Admirals' Revolt" over the favor shown the upstart Air Force in the 40s. No Air Force General has offered to sink a Navy aircraft carrier, and no Navy Admiral has offered to shoot down an Air Force strategic bomber. Now the battles are fought in Congressional Committees, among Committee staffs, and in the Offices of the Secretary of Defense. But they are no less fierce. 

In addition to cost of systems and equipment, the force itself has grown far more expensive. The advent of the All-Volunteer Force led to a force that is far better paid than that which fought the Vietnam War. The force is now largely married and with families. It is older and more senior. Individual soldiers, sailors, airman and Marines stay in longer -- often for full 20-year careers. They are far better trained and many are highly competitive in the civilian work-force. The upshot is a smaller and far more expensive military than the one that went to Korea or Vietnam -- or even Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in 1991.

And then there are tax expenditures. What is a tax expenditure? Lets say I manufacture widgets and I am also the President of the Association of Widget Manufacturers of America (AWMA). As a manufacturer and AWMA President, I think that I need a tax break to help me fund research and development, and to give me an edge against widgets that are imported from countries who pay their workers a lot less than I do. So I send my lobbyists to Washington DC and they come back with a tax break worth $300 million. While that is great for me, it is $300 million that is not available for a bunch of other stuff our tax money pays for. 

Ah, but I may point out that that $300 million is an investment in my industry. It ensures jobs in various Congressional districts. If my widgets are used in military aircraft or ships, that is even better. So, it is an investment. Okay?

There are scads of tax expenditures. There is the oil depletion allowance. There are tax breaks that allow US companies that do business overseas to sequester their overseas earnings so they aren't taxed in the US. There are personal income tax breaks for people who are able to take advantage of them; such as carried interest and stock options. One of the most wide spread tax expenditures is the home mortgage allowance.

All of these tax expenditures have their defenders. And, to some extent they are defensible as investments in industries, business start-ups, home-ownership, etc. 

So what have the new breed of debt and deficit hawks done to fix these problems? You know, the people who are ready to crash the country's and the world's economy, so as to "fix" the debt.

Not a damn thing.

If they wanted to "fix" Social Security, you would think they would either raise the amount of income subject to Social Security tax to $180,000, where it should be if the terms of the Reagan/O'Neill/Dole plan were honored. Or they would propose a change to how we ensure a decent income in retirement for our seniors, and put it in front of Congress and the American People for a vote; except the last time that was tried by the White House, Congress wanted nothing to do with it and Republicans took a beating in opinion polls and electoral polls for their pains. 

Moving on...  What have our debt demons done about the military? Well, they have tried to address personnel problems by sequestering funds and cutting services in the least productive way possible, leaving some to wonder if they accidentally picked up Mitt Romney's proposal to get illegal aliens to self-deport by mistake. As far as equipment and high-end systems; well, we have the F-35 which has blown a hole in every spending level and development timeline it has met. It is said that in a few years, at this pace, we will have the largest defense budget in the world, and one F-35 for our trouble. But at least the F-35 doesn't suffocate its pilots (I don't think it does anyway), that honor goes to the F-22. Both aircraft are burning money like crazy and aren't in service yet. Not to be outdone the Navy is playing with the Littoral Combat Ship, which is a multi-tasking platform. That means it can be reconfigured to do all sorts of missions, but hasn't shown an ability to do any of them well. So what is Congress doing on these? Spending the money as it is asked for and even as it isn't asked for. Sometimes, Congress buys stuff the services have told them they don't want. But its good for their donors, and sometimes for jobs back home. 

And lets not forget those tax expenditures. Thanks to Grover Norquist, everyone of those tax expenditures is sacrosanct. Try touching one and Grover and minions will raise a hue and cry that you are RAISING TAXES!!! They love the arguments about how tax cuts (read expenditures) are investments in jobs and that cutting them is JOB-KILLING! Curiously though, they don't see how spending on infrastructure improvements, or building a high-speed rail system, or building new schools, or investing in alternative energy systems also invests in jobs. 

Finally, we should talk about MEDICARE and medical expenses. I mentioned that the rate of increase is actually starting to slow. Funny story that. About twenty years ago, President Clinton tried to reform the health system and deliver a long dreamed of Democratic Party program of universal health care for Americans. Clinton made some political mis-steps along the way and the Republicans in Congress took his lunch money. They took control of both houses of Congress and summarily killed his proposed plan; "Hillary-Care" they liked to call it after his wife, the health care task-force chairwoman. 

Not to be seen as hard-hearted, and realizing that something actually did need to be done about health care, some Republicans came up with a solution that involved establishing health-care exchanges that would inject market forces into regulating health care costs, and implement a health care mandate, requiring everyone  get health care coverage as a way of getting past the health insurers reluctance to cover pre-existing conditions. The concept was widely accepted by GOP leaders. It became a feature of Newt Gingrich's Contract With America, and was endorsed by senior Republicans in the Senate. It got its first real-world test in Massachusetts when Governor Mitt Romney signed it into law. The resistance came, albeit mutely, from the left, who saw it as a way to blunt any drive toward a single-payer system.   

Yes, I am referring to the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), developed in the bowels of the Heritage Foundation and beloved of every GOP leader right up to the moment that a Democratic President chose to adopt it. 

So, please keep this in mind when you listen to them bleat about our debt and deficit. They have done nothing to fix it and quite a lot to make it worse (and I didn't even get into fighting two wars on a credit card and cutting VA expenditures , thus potentially dumping those costs onto already strapped States). Now, in their fervor, they are prepared to welsh on debts that they have authorized and appropriated while prancing about as fiscal conservatives. 

Conservatives aren't deadbeats and they pay their bills. They also pay their way. These bums aren't conservatives.

Nature Gets a Vote

Military strategists -- the good ones anyway -- know a big truth; your enemy gets a vote. There are forces at work in the world that do not do our bidding, that do not know our plans, and care less about them. It is a good life lesson, and I was thinking about that as I watched floodwaters devour much of Colorado's front range last month.

For most of my life I have generally trusted that technological and engineering solutions could solve most of our problems with high levels of safety. While I still think those solutions deserve our consideration, recent events such as the Colorado floods and the Fukushima Daichi reactor disaster from two years ago, have shaken my confidence.

You'll recall that the Fukushima disaster happened when a massive tsunami inundated the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The plant was designed with layered defense principles in place. It was designed to "fail to safe" in the event of a severe earthquake. 

What does it mean to "fail to safe?" Have you ever wondered why elevators don't fall? Because they are designed  so that if they lose power -- which would cause them to fall -- that a braking mechanism will engage and stop the elevator in the shaft. The braking mechanism is disengaged by the same power source that moves the elevator, when that power fails, the break engages. 

That is an example of engineering solutions making things safer for us (nothing is completely safe, but most things can be made safer).

Fukushima was engineered to be safe against almost every imaginable event; earthquakes, airplanes, operator screw-ups -- almost everything but a 30 foot wall of sea-water. They missed that one.

Along Colorado's front range, floods have followed a consistent pattern. A violent thunderstorm in a limited area sends a large amount of water into a river or creek causing highly destructive, albeit fairly limited, flash floods. Meteorologists weren't quite sure what to make of a massive weather system that appeared to be have the capacity to inundate much of northern Colorado. It defied all their expectations. Flood control measures and systems were defeated. 

In addition to the property damage , people driven from their homes, washed out roads, cut-off mountain towns and a mercifully small number of lost lives, the storm also did severe damage to oil and gas drilling and storage sites across the plains of north-eastern Colorado. Storage ponds containing "fracking" effluent were flushed out and the effluent washed into the soil where it will percolate into aquifers that supply water to farms and communities. Oil storage tanks were upset by walls of water moving through ancient seasonal waterways, as well as newer expedient one like highways. Those tanks were filmed rolling and bobbing like so many corks across the prairies, jettisoning their contents into the water tables. 

The front-range floods were bad enough, but imagine a little more rain and a somewhat larger area, spreading from Denver to Cheyenne, Wyoming. Imagine massive walls of water hitting the North and South Platte Rivers and moving across the prairies with the inexorable intensity and appetites that we saw in the Saint Vrain and Big Thompson Rivers and Boulder Creek. 

Imagine the Keystone XL Pipeline in the rivers' path. 

Nature gets a vote too.

Words Matter

Conservatives believe that change should be approached with an appropriate level of caution. Before a change is made, one should consider the benefits and costs; what will be left behind, and whether we -- as a collective -- will be truly better off.

Conservatives believe in paying their way.

They also believe in the redemptive power of people trying to promote the general welfare, but always with the humility that comes with knowing that you could get it wrong.

Conservatives believe in politics and government because they know that through them the appetites of greed and power are restrained.

Conservatives do not believe in lighting the house on fire because they lost an argument over what will be served for dessert.

They don't go from tantrum to tantrum.

Words matter. When we debase words and tell lies with them we risk losing the concepts and behaviors they represent.

Please stop racist, revanchist, misogynist radicals from stealing that which is best in America. They are not conservatives. Don't let them have the word.

War Poems

I have been watching (well, re-watching) The World At War, the 1974 BBC series on World War II. The series was credited for -- among other things -- bringing the war on the Eastern Front to Western viewers. Episode number 9, "Red Star" explores the siege of Leningrad, Russian partisans, and ends with the Battle of Kursk, which marked the end of Germany's offensive and the beginning of the end for the Nazi regime.

What was most poignant for me were the poems quoted in the episode. Russians are serious about their poetry; it is often hauntingly beautiful and tragic. These poems certainly were:

Wait for Me (Konstantin Simonov, 1941)
According to the site http://russianpoetrytranslations.wordpress.com, "This poem was written and dedicated to V.Serova by Konstantin Simonov (1915-1979) in 1941. During the Great Patriotic War Simonov was a frontline correspondent for the newspaper ‘Krasnaya Zvezda’(‘Red Star’) . It was published in the newspaper ‘Pravda’ in February 1942, when the nazi forces were repulsed from Moscow. Soldiers cut it out of newspapers, copied it as they sat in their dugouts, learned it by heart and sent it in letters to their wives and sweethearts. It was found in the breast pockets of the wounded and the dead."

Wait for me, and I’ll return,
Wait, and I will come.
Wait when heavy yellow rains
Try to bring you down.

Wait through summer’s wasting heat,
Wait through falling snow,
Wait when others still repeat
Not to stay alone.

Wait with hope when letters stop,
Strong and tough just be…
Turn away from those who’re stern,
From their grief stay free.

Wait for me, and I’ll return
No illusions..Try
To escape the ones who mourn,
Keep away your heart.

Let my son and mother cry
And believe I am dead.
And ignore friends’ tears around
When weak hope is spent.

Bitter wine they’ll drink..Forget,
Their compassion, too.
Wait for me, believe instead..
Pray and smile once more.

Wait for me, and I’ll return.
I will go through flame.
I’ll be back to you, I’ll burn
Any threat’s disgrace.

They will never understand
How among the fire
Out of lethal empty space
I have come alive.

Only you and I will know why
I am at home again..
Why you’ve learned to wait in time
Like nobody has.

Then there is this poem:

Son (Pavel Antokolsky, 1943)
The poem was also featured in the "Red Star" episode and has been published at the website http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread801701/pg "This poem "Son" was written by the Russian Jewish poet Pavel Antokolsky,a year after the death of his 18 year old son Lieutenant Vladimir Antokolovsky,killed in action on June 6th,1942... " The poem is a dialogue between father and son.

Do not call me, father, do not seek me,
Do not call me, do not wish me back.

We’re on a route uncharted, fire and blood erase our tracks.
On we fly, on wings of thunder, never more to sheath our swords.
All of us in battle fallen, not to be brought back by words.

Will there be a rendezvous? I know not.
I only know we still must fight.
We are sand grains in infinity, never to meet,never more see light.

Farewell then my son. Farewell then my conscience.
My youth and my solace my one and my only.

And let this farewell be the end of a story,
Of solitude vast and which none is more lonely.
In which you remain,barred forever and ever,
From light and from air,with your death pangs untold.
Untold and unsoothed, not to be resurrected.
Forever and ever, an 18 year old.

Farewell then, no trains ever come from those regions
Unscheduled or scheduled, no aeroplanes fly there.
Farewell then my son, for no miracles happen,
As in this world dreams do not come true.

Farewell…

I will dream of you still as a baby,
Treading the earth with little strong toes,
The earth where already so many lie buried.
This song to my son, is come to its close.

My generation of Americans were raised to think of Russians as godless communists -- the best that could be said for them that they were automatons who hated and feared us. Yet, six years before I was born, Russia was our steadfast ally and they paid a frightful price waging war against our common enemy. Their poetry from that war should remind us that soldiers -- all soldiers -- love and grieve, and that wars sometimes go in unintended directions and present unthinkable bills to the innocent and guilty alike.

More Gun Talk

This post started out as a Facebook comment to a friend on the subject of our gun rights and whether they are threatened. This is a cleaned up and edited version of that response.

I don't think there is a threat to gun ownership in this country.

The NRA tells us there is; of course they've been doing that since the 70s. And since the 70s guns have been used as a wedge issue and a way to bolster a political brand.

The Heller decision of a few years ago, in which the SCOTUS said that the District of Columbia could not deprive residents of the right to have handguns in their homes also clearly stated that the government (federal, state or local) could establish reasonable boundaries as to what kind of weapons are allowed to the public. The Heller decision was widely praised by gun-rights activists because it pretty well knocked down the previous judicial view that the 2nd Amendment said you had to be in well-organized militia for the 2nd Amendment to pertain to an individual's rights.

So, about some of those weapons. Not so many years ago,  few private citizens had AR-15s. They just were not available outside of police departments. In 1977, at the "revolt in Cincinnati" the NRA was taken over by a guy who wanted to eliminate just about any government restriction on gun ownership. He thought that laws banning ownership of full auto weapons should be abolished for example. At about that same time the NRA abandoned their policy of not accepting funds from gun manufacturers, becoming in essence the lobbying arm for a billions-dollar international business. One of the things the manufacturers and their lobbying arm did was create a new domestic market in guns--by manufacturing variants of the AR-15 and some other semi-automatic weapons that allow a shooter to put as many rounds as the magazine will hold downrange in a very short time.

By the way, we hear a lot about mentally ill people being the problem, not the gun. But I have to tell you, a mentally ill person with a Bushmaster is a lot more dangerous than a mentally ill person with a baseball bat, or knife, or even a bolt action rifle.

The NRA says that before we start making new laws we should enforce the ones we already have. However, they have spent much of the last 30 years neutering our ability to enforce the laws we have on the books. They also argue that one of the more effective laws (background checks) is useless and ought to be tossed. In part they are right; background checks are far from optimal--because the NRA has pushed laws that make it illegal to share background check data. Do you know that the FBI cannot check a suspected terrorist's name against state and BATF data to see if the suspect has purchased a weapon? Thanks NRA, for helping the USA win the war on terrorism.

 What has the Obama Administration done? Not much until a few weeks ago. Now Obama has sent Executive Orders to Executive branch departments telling them to do things that they are required by existing laws to do and, in some cases, clarifying some vagaries in existing laws. In short he is doing what the NRA insists he should do. President Obama's commission--led by Vice President Biden--is also drafting laws that it will submit for Congress's consideration to limit what kind of guns the public can own.

So Congress (and the nation) can have a debate about it. The NRA seems to think that even having the debate is the onset of tyranny.

I want to stress that the administration is doing what SCOTUS in the Heller decision says should happen: the citizens' rights to keep and bear arms should be respected within reasonable limits. I also want to emphasize that if all of the measures that the Obama administration proposes to Congress pass, then we will have the same gun liberties that we enjoyed when Ronald Reagan was President.

With that, I'll go back to my point that I do not believe our rights are in any jeopardy at all. This argument is artificial. It is generated to churn up sales for gun-makers, and drive political wedges at the same time between Americans.